Selective breeding of rats differing in sensitivity to the effects of acute ethanol administration.

Selective breeding of rats for sensitivity to the anesthetic effects of ethanol is being carried out with rats derived from the genetically heterogeneous N/Nih stock. Thirteen generations of within family selection have been achieved with replicate high (HAS), low (LAS) and control alcohol sensitive (CAS) lines. Significant separation between lines on sleep time and blood ethanol concentration (BEC) at awakening following ethanol administration has been achieved. In general, the results obtained so far replicate the findings with short (SS) and long (LS) sleep mice. One exception is that the high alcohol sensitivity rats (HAS) also appear more sensitive to pentobarbital relative to LAS rats. This finding is opposite to that which occurs with SS and LS mice where the low ethanol sensitive SS mice appear more sensitive to pentobarbital than the LS mice.